The 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Race was run from

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

to Southampton in 1989–90. It was run with several classes of yacht. '' Steinlager 2'' skippered by Peter Blake won the race easily. For the first time since 1981–82 (when the race comprised just four legs), the victor won every leg in their division (albeit closely chased by both Grant Dalton's ''Fisher & Paykel NZ'' and Pierre Fehlmann's ''Merit'' entries). The vast difference in speed and capability of the many different boats involved in the 1989 to 1990 race lead to the creation of a committee to examine the commission of a Whitbread class boat for use in future races. Many of the Maxi yachts in this year's race were nearly twice the size (LOA) of the smallest, and carried well over twice the sail area. The net result of this was that many of the smaller boats finished the longer legs more than ten days after the leg winner. In the overall results, the last finisher was some 52 days behind Blake's ''Steinlager 2'' 128-day aggregate time. In addition, the cost of the big yachts was becoming too expensive to fund - even for the well sponsored teams like ''Steinlager'', ''Rothmans'' and ''Merit''. Eventually, the new class would be called the

Whitbread 60 The Whitbread 60 (W60), later known as the Volvo Ocean 60 (VO60), was a class of ocean racing yacht built to a " box rule" specifying key design parameters of the 10 smaller yachts which took part the 1993–94 Whitbread Round the World Race. ...

. The race featured the first all-woman crew on

Tracy Edwards Tracy Edwards, MBE (born 5 September 1962) is a British sailor. In 1989 she skippered the first all-female crew in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, becoming the first woman to receive the Yachtsman of the Year Trophy and was appointed ...

' ''Maiden''. Although in a much smaller boat than many of their male counterparts the women fared well—claiming two leg victories in Division D. Edwards was named yachtsman of the year and appointed MBE. In 2018 a documentary has been made about the team's participation in the race.

Route

1989-1990 and 1993-1994 Whitbread map-fr

Results

The boat ''Creighton's Naturally'' suffered a serious

broach The BROACH warhead is a Tandem-charge, multi-stage warhead developed by Team BROACH; BAE Systems Global Combat Systems Munitions, Thales Missile Electronics and QinetiQ. BROACH stands for ''Bomb Royal Ordnance Augmented CHarge''. Development of ...

on leg 2, at about 3 am. Crew members Anthony (Tony) Philips and Bart van den Dwey were swept over board. They were both pulled back on deck. Van den Dwey successfully resuscitated, but, after three hours of trying, crewmembers were unable to revive Philips. A few days later, by radio agreement with relatives ashore, Philips was buried at sea. ''Martela OF'' lost its keel and capsized 350 nautical miles from the finish of leg 4. The unharmed crew was picked up from the overturned hull by ''Charles Jourdan'' and ''Merit''. ''Union Bank of Finland'' also broke off the race to participate in the rescue.Volvo Ocean Race: Legends Race 2018
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1989-90 Whitbread Round The World Race The Ocean Race Punta del Este Sports competitions in Southampton Fremantle History of Fort Lauderdale, Florida Sports in Fort Lauderdale, Florida Whitbread Round The World Race, 1989-90 Whitbread Round The World Race, 1989-90 Sports competitions in Auckland 1990 in New Zealand sport 1980s in Auckland 1980s in Southampton 1990s in Auckland 1990s in Southampton